| Abstract: | In Making Science (1992) I make the distinction between two types of knowledge: research frontier knowledge and core knowledge. Core knowledge
is the small body of knowledge for which the entire scientific community treats as indisputable facts. The research frontier
is all new knowledge which makes claim to being facts but in practice there is no consensus on this knowledge. The two types
of knowledge are linked together by the evaluation process. Most frontier knowledge turns out to be insignificant and is ignored.
A small part of frontier knowledge is taken as candidates for the core and evaluated. Most of this knowledge turns out to
be “wrong.” Thus the important data of Jacobs ( 1989) loses a good deal of its impact because he forces it into a theory which
he calls “social control”: a theory for which there is no evidence.
Stephen Cole is professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of Making Science: Between Nature and Society and, with Jonathan R. Cole, Social Stratification in Science.
Stephen Cole is professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of Making Science: Between Nature and Society and, with Jonathan R. Cole, Social Stratification in Science. |
